The Big Sleep (1946)

The Big Sleep (1946)

IMDb - 81%

81%

Rotten Tomatoes - 96%

96%

Roger Ebert - 100%

100%

Summary

The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results". In 1997, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and added it to the National Film Registry. Private detective Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is summoned to the mansion of his new client General Sternwood (Waldron). The wealthy retired general wants to resolve gambling debts his daughter, Carmen Sternwood (Vickers), owes to bookseller Arthur Gwynn Geiger. As Marlowe is leaving, General Sternwood's older daughter, Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), stops him. She suspects her father's true motive for calling in a detective is to find his young friend Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.